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1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1Four Energy Questions We’ll Be Watching In 2017http://insideenergy.org/2017/01/18/four-energy-questions-well-be-watching-in-2017/
http://insideenergy.org/2017/01/18/four-energy-questions-well-be-watching-in-2017/#respondWed, 18 Jan 2017 23:08:35 +0000http://www.insideenergy.org/?p=28308Inside Energy is launching a new feature with our partner radio station, KUVO in Denver, kicking off each Monday with a brief yet electrifying (pun intended, of course) discussion on energy. This week, we looked at some of the big questions we’ll be keeping a close eye on in 2017:

Xcel Energy, one of Colorado’s electric utilities, will be experimenting with new pricing models for electricity…will they work? You know how an Uber is more expensive during peak travel times? Xcel is trying the same thing with electricity. At 2 a.m., could cost about a third of what it does in the middle of the afternoon. If the pilot programs, which will start with 10,000 customers, go well, Xcel could roll out these programs more broadly across Colorado in a few years.

Could 2017 be the year of the electric car? Tesla just began rolling batteries off production lines at its Gigafactory outside of Reno, Nevada. It’ll need those batteries to meet the thousands of pre-orders it has for it’s “affordable” Model 3, which could appear on roads later this year. But will the economic and political climate be ripe for electric vehicles and home energy storage? Musk and Trump actually form a logical, if odd, partnership when you consider how the purported thousands of jobs the Gigafactory will create fit into Trump’s goal of revitalizing American manufacturing.

What’s the outlook for government funding on research and development for renewable energy technology? This question is particularly important for Colorado, home to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. While we don’t yet know exactly what Trump’s goals are when it comes to research spending, we do know that he has influence. NREL gets 80 percent of its funding from the Department of Energy, which puts together a budget that must be approved by Congress and the President. For a historical look at federal spending for energy research and development, take a look at Inside Energy’s data dive.

Trump made downsizing federal government a priority…will states pick up the slack when it comes to regulating energy? This week, hearings start for some of Trump’s cabinet picks. Who will have the most sway over how everything from oil and gas to electric vehicles are regulated? We’ll be watching former Texas governor Rick Perry, tapped to head the Department of Energy, Scott Pruitt for the Environmental Protection Agency and Ryan Zinke for the Department of the Interior. Flagship rules like the Clean Power Plan, which aims to reduce carbon emissions at power plants, are in the Trump administration’s crosshairs. But we’ve seen a lot of states, including Colorado, come out ahead of the CPP with their own state-level legislation. Will state level action be enough to tackle an issue as huge, and as blind to geopolitical boundaries, as climate change?

Listen to us talk energy on KUVO’s morning show, “First Take With Lando and Chavis” on Monday mornings at kuvo.org. Have an energy topic you’d like to hear us take on? Let us know by submitting your questions below.

]]>http://insideenergy.org/2017/01/18/four-energy-questions-well-be-watching-in-2017/feed/0“When the snow’s blowing, we go to work”: The Linemen Who Keep Your Lights Onhttp://insideenergy.org/2016/04/11/when-the-snows-blowing-we-go-to-work-the-linemen-who-keep-your-lights-on/
http://insideenergy.org/2016/04/11/when-the-snows-blowing-we-go-to-work-the-linemen-who-keep-your-lights-on/#respondMon, 11 Apr 2016 19:14:20 +0000http://www.insideenergy.org/?p=2966On a bitterly cold March morning in Denver, snow was forecast to start falling any minute. Time for Kevin Hinrichs and his crew to head out on the job.

“When the snow’s blowing and your power’s out, that’s when we go to work,” Hinrichs said.

Inside Energy has reported on the new technologies that are changing our electric grid, from smart meters to adding solar and wind power generation. But our electricity still travels from the power plant to our homes via miles of power lines. And someone has to keep those lines functioning. That someone is Hinrichs, a lineman for Xcel Energy.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s wind generated or coal generated, we’re going to get it to the customer,” he said. “That’s what we do as linemen.”

Hinrichs has worked as a lineman for 25 years, and storms are the worst time for the job, he said. When branches bring down power lines or motorists slip on wet roads and take out a utility pole, the “trouble men” – the emergency repair crews – get called out to restore the power.

Those trouble men are on call whether the storm is in town or in another state. Hinrichs recalled a day that he was out riding his motorcycle with his wife when he got a call about bad weather in Minnesota. A few hours later he was on a plane to repair lines in Minnesota.

Hinrichs’ crew scale a 1953 power pole to replace an old transformer. Safety gear, like the equipment used to climb poles, has made the job a lot safer since Hinrichs started working 25 years ago. Photo by Brian Malone/Inside Energy

But most of Hinrichs’ work now is maintaining and updating the aging power lines in Denver. When Inside Energy met up with Hinrichs, his team was replacing an old transformer in a customer’s backyard. Hinrichs’ crew scaled a utility pole bearing a date: 1953. And that’s probably about the age of the neighborhood, Hinrichs said. Since 1953, the houses in this neighborhood have added electrical appliances – air conditioners, dishwashers, electric heating, big screen TVs – which strain the old transformers that deliver power to individual houses. Hinrichs said often the utility doesn’t know what needs to be replaced or upgraded until customers call to complain that their power has gone out.

Some smart grid technology may keep the utilities and the crew abreast of changes, but ultimately the linemen will still need to go out and fix the problems, Hinrichs said.

And that can get dangerous. Hinrichs described days when their crews needed police escorts after gunfire broke out below their trucks. Even routine maintenance, like replacing transformers, has its dangers. The transformers contain oil, which can sometimes be boiling when crews take them down to replace them.

Kevin Hinrichs shows off his lineman tattoo. Hinrichs has worked as a lineman for Xcel Energy for 25 years. Photo by Brian Malone/Inside Energy

As a foreman, Hinrichs worries more about his crew getting hurt than falling off a power pole himself. The risks of the job mean that crew need to watch out for each other, and that forms a strong bond between linemen.

Hinrichs rolled up his sleeve to reveal a tattoo of a lineman working on a pole. When he joined the company more than 20 years ago, he planned to be an engineer, not a lineman. But he fell in love with the work and decided to stay on as a lineman.

“At the end of the day,” he said, “I can look back and see what I did.”

]]>http://insideenergy.org/2016/04/11/when-the-snows-blowing-we-go-to-work-the-linemen-who-keep-your-lights-on/feed/0Marijuana’s Electric Bills Are Sky Highhttp://insideenergy.org/2015/12/23/marijuanas-electric-bills-are-sky-high/
http://insideenergy.org/2015/12/23/marijuanas-electric-bills-are-sky-high/#respondThu, 24 Dec 2015 00:17:37 +0000http://www.insideenergy.org/?p=2650Marijuana is Colorado’s newest cash crop. Between January and June of 2015, more than 112,000 pounds of bud were sold in the state. The Denver Post reported in October that monthly sales of marijuana in Colorado soared to over $100 million.

But growing marijuana requires loads of electricity. Young plants require intense light for the majority of a day. In a vegetative state, the plants need 18 hours of light a day — which drops to only 12 hours per day when they flower. Fans churn constantly to keep the plants from getting too hot under the bright lights.

That kind of electricity has a hefty price tag. John Rotherham, owner of Nature’s Herbs and Wellness, estimates he pays between $20,000 and $25,000 a month for electricity at one of his grow houses.

As demand for Colorado ganja rises, utilities and growers are looking for ways to make grow houses more energy efficient. New technologies have begun offering solutions, Rotherham said.

“When I first got in this business the lighting companies weren’t allowed to do business with us because federally it’s against the law,” he said. “Now the lighting industry is all about this industry.”

To save on electricity bills, some growers are turning to the largest free source of energy available: the sun. Going back to old-fashioned greenhouses cuts out many of the energy-intensive lights other indoor cultivators rely on, says Tim Beall, chief operations officer of GrowCo. Beall boasts that his new 91,000 square-foot greenhouse in Pueblo County, Colorado will be the most energy-efficient cannabis operation in the state.

“Overall we’re going to have 75 percent lower cost of production than you have in an indoor growing facility,” he says.

Marijuana takes more than light. Cultivators need to keep temperatures in the growhouses consistent, and keep the plants from overheating. That usually means turning on lots of fans. But Beall’s facility is looking at swamp coolers instead, which use less energy.

“Ten years from now you’re going to see all of the indoor growing facilities that are inefficient and have four times the cost and ten times the energy cost and they’re all going to start converting into greenhouses,” Beall says.